Business

DA opens investigation of security company that submitted bogus claims to Port of Oakland

By Thomas Peele and Matt O'Brien

Bay Area News Group

Posted:
03/13/2014 06:03:42 AM PDT

Updated:
03/13/2014 06:04:12 AM PDT

OAKLAND -- The Alameda County District Attorney has opened a consumer fraud investigation into a private security company run out of a Black Muslim temple that submitted fake documents to the Port of Oakland and other public agencies as it pursued lucrative government contracts.

The announcement came the day after this newspaper reported that the company, BMT International Security Services, told the port it worked for four government agencies, including BART, that have no record of ever employing it.

"We have an investigation underway," Teresa Drenick, a spokeswoman for District Attorney Nancy O'Malley, said Wednesday. She declined to discuss the scope of the inquiry. O'Malley was not available for comment. BMT owner Rory Parker didn't return messages.

The lawyer for a man who says he was beaten by a BMT guard in 2012 and is suing the company has also asked the California Bureau of Security and Investigative Services, which licenses security companies and guards, to investigate BMT. All such requests are investigated, a bureau spokesman, Russ Heimerich, said Wednesday, although he would not discuss BMT specifically.

It all adds up to more trouble for a company that has lost contracts with Alameda County and Los Angeles' housing authority after it was found it submitted fake insurance policies to both agencies. After the 2012 lawsuit revealed false documentation, Parker wrote to Alameda County that the company was sold a bogus policy it gave as proof of insurance.

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The Oakland City Council backed away last week from giving the company a contract to guard City Hall and other buildings.

BMT, run out of a Black Muslim temple on 27th Street in Oakland called Elijah's University, is a spinoff of the defunct Your Black Muslim Bakery. Yusuf Bey, its founder, claimed the bakery was an African-American self-help organization, but prosecutors have described it as a wide-ranging criminal organization that committed crimes from campaign finance and real estate fraud to torture and murder. It collapsed in 2007 after Bey's son, Yusuf Bey IV, ordered the murders of journalist Chauncey Bailey and two other men. Bey IV is now serving a life prison term with no parole.

Two of his late father's disciples, Dahood Sharieff Bey and Basheer Muhammad, run the temple where BMT is headquartered. Both have advocated publicly that the company receive the port contract.

But the future of that deal seems in doubt. Port administrators had planned to finalize the contract early this year to patrol two waterfront parks after BMT won approval from the port commission in November, but the agreement has been delayed as the port pursues a "due diligence" evaluation.

BMT's written proposal, obtained from the port under the public records act, contained numerous claims that people at other agencies said were not true -- such as security contracts at BART, the San Joaquin County Housing Authority and the Riverside Transit Authority.

BMT also told the port its chief financial officer was a Harvard-educated former FBI agent. It told Alameda County that the same person was a former San Diego banker with a finance degree from Golden Gate University.